Ev BogueT.Z. asked to interview me about telling from experience. This interview is a cross-post from her blog, Experiencing Revolution.
T.Z.: Your present work seems to have undergone a radical, deliberate transformation from your Far Beyond the Stars days. How would you say your approach to writing for an online community has shifted?
Ev Bogue: I approach my work as a constant evolution. This means that I untether from past work as soon as it doesn't feel relevant to my current work anymore.
I made a lot of rookie mistakes when I wrote Far Beyond The Stars. I'm sure I'm making a lot of rookie mistakes now. When my future-self looks back at me, he'll giggle at how little I knew about the craft of writing.
The shift, my shift, is in moving forward with continued momentum.
This means in early August I made the decision to let all of my previous books go. This puts me in a place of uncertainty. I think to myself sometimes, when I'm feeling scared or lonely, that maybe no one will like my new work. Eventually that feeling passes, usually when I get back to work.
T.Z.: You've recently said that "when I don't write from experience, I'm bullshitting." Can you give us a quick breakdown of how you used "Experience Telling" (concept introduced by G.B.) to guide/ground your work?
Ev: Exactly: if I'm not experience telling I'm bullshitting. What is experience telling? It's very hard. It's limiting the work that I do to the experiences that I've actually had. It's avoiding slipping to esoteric writing that sounds all nice and cushy, but doesn't land, because it's not something that actually happened to me.
I've noticed that my writing falls flat when I'm not telling from experience. So, I've made a vow: I tell from experience now, as much as I can. Yes, this is hard work. It has to be about me: not you, not them, not the entirety of all human experience encapsulated into one sweeping melodramatic sentence.
When I get a question these days, and I can't answer it from experience, I don't try to answer it anyway. I say: I can't answer that from experience, but maybe someone else can.
I am not a Guru. I'm a 26 year old writer who loves experimenting with emerging technologies, and exploring the world.
T.Z.: I love this quote from your recent book intro on movement creation -- "Leaders are born in extraordinary situations. When they look back at their lives, they start to see a common thread: that they have always done this work, and they always will." How would you describe your 'common thread'?
Ev: The still point is me. I am the common thread. I'm doing my best to write about things that I've actually experienced, and I've only been able to do so much with my life so far, so that's extremely limiting.
This means I can't write about how to achieve enlightenment. It means I can't write about how to achieve a zen-like state of super creative flow that never ends. It means I can't write about how to repair to a hoverboard engine. These aren't things that I've done, so it's best for me to leave them to someone who has.
Instead, I look at how my own experience is evolving with the Internet. I untethered from Twitter in June. This is no small event. Not many people have left Twitter behind. I took nearly a month off the Internet completely. Not many people are unplugging for so long. What am I up to right now? I'm not going to say, because that would be hype, which isn't experience telling.
This is the thru-line: me at the intersection of what excites me.
T.Z.: We had a recent discussion in which you said "what I wonder is, how do we teach people to 'ignite their inner match' in a concrete actionable way? The Internet would benefit from that." What suggestions do you have for online creators who want to move away from nebulous "inspiration," and towards igniting real action?
Ev: My question is: what questions do I have for online creators who are attempting to teach people how to move from inspiration to action?
It goes back to experience telling. Everyone has been creatively broken at one time or another. We've all had writers block. We've all be terrible at painting. I still suck at rebuilding hoverboard engines.
When I write something like this, I ask myself: What actual things did I do to bring myself out of a creative block and into a space of evolving my work?
Not what esoteric things sound good. Not what my mind thinks everyone wants to hear. I assume that my readers don't want cotton candy for writing -- they want writing that lands. I've found that writing that lands is grounded in my own human experience.
I tell a story about what I've done, and how I've done it.
If I don't have something to tell from experience, I go outside until I've experienced something.
T.Z.: As creators, don't we naturally take leaps in association between the known/unknown? Doesn't innovation require a creative interpretation that extends the personal out into the broader realm?
Ev: I've tried writing from a speculative angle, it's definitely one way to write. It doesn't land with my readers, so I'm not doing it so much anymore. "If I'm not experience telling, I'm bullshitting."
That being said, I come up with crazy ideas all of the time. It's just that my intention is to experiment with them, before I bring them to my audience. I don't want to tell anyone to get on a hoverboard that I haven't tested out myself -- it might not fly. How would I know anyway? The answer is: I don't.